Medellín, Colombia

BACKGROUND

In 1991, Medellín had the highest homicide rate of any city in the world (380 per 100,000 people), a rate which has since dropped more than 90% (2015). The home of the infamous Medellín cartel, led by Pablo Escobar (d. 1993), drug trafficking and inter-cartel and gang violence has been – and still is – at the heart of the social and criminal problems the city faces. Since the demise of the powerful Medellín and Cali cartels, Medellín suffered like much of Colombia in the Armed Conflict between left-wing FARC rebels, government security forces, and right-wing paramilitary groups.

Medellín has transformed its reputation from that of the most violent city in the world, beset by poverty, sprawling slums, gang violence and corruption, to achieve international notoriety as a success story of urban transformation, social investment and innovation through a series of municipal initiatives involving partnerships with the private sector and civil society.

Violence has not been eliminated entirely and bloody wars for territorial control between rival trafficking cartels have been fought out across the city as recently as 2013. Teenage gang violence is still an issue, and poverty and youth unemployment are still major factors. Nonetheless, Medellín now works with several international partners, including UN Habitat, the Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities, the World Bank Group, US AID and the Strong Cities Network, and was the host city of the 2014 World Urban Forum. It has achieved a dramatic reduction in violence, invested in public spaces and community resilience, and instigated innovative strategies for regeneration, inclusion, and enterprise.

Medellín joined the Strong Cities Network in September 2015 and has played an active role in the network as a member of the SCN International Steering Committee. The city was the 2016 winner of the Lee Kuan Yew World City Prize, awarded by the Government of Singapore.

NATIONAL OVERVIEW

National counter-terrorism policy in Colombia has long focused on efforts to counter narcotics trafficking, money laundering, extortion and the reign of violence against communities which successive gangs, trafficking organisations and armed groups have wrought across the country. This has necessitated a heavy focus on policing, criminal investigation, intelligence and inter-agency and international cooperation. In particular, Colombia has worked closely with the United States on countering narco-trafficking and directing military operations under the ‘Plan Colombia’. Recent progress in negotiations with the left-wing FARC rebel group to end the decades-long bloody armed conflict has received wide-scale international attention in the build up to, and following, the national plebiscite of 2016 and the resumption of negotiations towards an agreement. President Santos was awarded the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of his leadership in efforts to bring peace through the negotiation process.

The national experience of terrorism has therefore encompassed a very wide range of activities with the response necessarily addressing concurrent ties to deep social and economic issues as well as matters of corruption, the legitimacy police and other state actors, and connectivity to international markets for drugs and weapons trafficking and money laundering.

The national level has also been integral in supporting local action and enabling change in Medellín, with the early appointment of a Minister directly responsible for countering narco-terrorism and supporting the community re-building process. While Medellín has undoubtedly led and delivered its own radical transformation from a city of violence and terror to one of innovation, creativity and opportunity, national actors have been integral to its success and to encouraging increased local action in cities across Colombia. For instance, the Plan Nacional de Vigilancia Comunitaria por Cuadrantes articulates major national policing support for locally-driven community security initiatives.

LOCAL OVERVIEW

Medellín has multiple local action plans designed to prevent violence, promote peace-building agendas and develop approaches to integration, cohesion, rehabilitation and public safety. Many of these fall within the remit of the current 2016-2019 Development Plan, ‘Medellín Resiliente’. The plan builds on previous iterations, including ‘A more humane Medellín’ (1998-2000), ‘Competitive Medellín’ (2001-2003), ‘Medellín, a commitment for the entire citizenry’ (2004-2007), ‘Medellín is solidary and competitive’ (2008-2011), and ‘Everybody for Life’ (2012-2015). More detail on each of these plans, as well as comprehensive overview of Medellín’s local political approach can be found in the Medellín Charter produced by City Hall.

A large degree of the city’s current CVE-relevant programming comes under the Security and Coexistence Public Policy, approved in September 2016, which aims to build the capacity of citizens and institutions to govern and respond to security and inclusion issues and emphasises the need to identify complex underlying causes and early prevention strategies.

A flagship policy is the Strategy of Guarantees of Non-Repetition of Violence (GNR), which seeks to identify causes of violence related to the armed conflict in Medellín, support extensive research and conduct an inventory of local art projects that address the armed conflict. It ties into additional programmes within the development plan, including the Recovering Security and Citizen Coexistence dimension, the ‘Medellín is Counting on you to Build Peace in the Region’ challenge, the Promotion of Human Rights programme, and the Comprehensive Care for Victims and/or witnesses of Crimes with High Social Impact project.

Much of Medellín’s violence prevention and CVE-relevant initiatives involve oversight, direction and monitoring from the Resilience Office, headed by the Chief Resilience Officer. Given Medellín’s broad approach to security issues, there are necessarily multiple agencies, frontline delivery bodies and governance committees feeding into the multi-agency approaches of many of the city’s individual programmes and projects. This includes programmes designed to identify and refer vulnerable individuals and groups.

Key Information

City

Medellín

Country

Colombia

Population

1,756,711

Local Political Leadership

Federico Gutiérrez

SCN Steering Committee Member

ADDITIONAL ACTIVITIES BY SECTOR

Urban Planning and Public Space

The development of public space is one of the best known facets of Medellín’s approach. Medellín’s local authorities have drawn a direct correlation between poor, inaccessible and ‘ungoverned’ public space and the proliferation of violence and high public safety risk. Opening up these spaces, connecting them to the city centre, and restoring public squares, green spaces and neighbourhoods previously dominated by cartels and gangs to the communities around them has been integral to the city’s violence prevention strategy.

Key initiatives include the construction of the Medellín Metrocable, a vast cable car system, as well as series of escalators connecting hillside comunas and informal settlements to the CBD and dramatically improving physical mobility around the city. The city has also worked with inhabitants and local communities in the suburban informal settlements to build canals and impose a natural, green perimeter around the city and slow an otherwise rapid urban sprawl of informal settlements.

Prize-winning architecture, creativity and innovative design have been equally important to the city’s approach. Of particular note is the building of multiple new libraries and universities, specifically targeting the city’s poorest neighbourhoods and informal settlements.

In addition to major infrastructure developments, Medellín’s authorities also emphasise the important impact of smaller scale changes to public space, including increasing street lighting and the number of bus stops and ensuring that public squares become places of art, culture and community for all, rather than crime, trafficking and violence. Importantly, these initiatives seek not only to reduce levels of actual crime and increase safety, but also improve public perceptions of safety for communities that previously felt high levels of risk and vulnerability.

Families, Youth Engagement and Community Work

Medellín’s work in this area has long encompassed a range of activities:

Establishing multiple youth engagement schemes;

Expanding free community services, including libraries;

Emphasising design and innovation, especially in poor areas –two major new libraries are located in deprived hillside settlements;

Building innovative public-private enterprises which engage with the community, including Ruta N, a key business/science/technology enterprise;

From the municipal to the very local: strengthening community dialogue and reforming public policy at the local level, starting with a series of neighbourhood roundtables, and the division of city into ‘quadrantes’ facing similar issues to better target municipal policy

With the 18-26 age group representing 90% of the victims of violent crime in Medellín, and a high proportion of perpetrators of and participants in violent crime similarly aged, the city has made youth engagement a high priority. Medellín has launched multiple initiatives in arts, culture and education, from football teams and music schools to libraries and centres of innovation, training and entrepreneurship.

City Hall has led on the development of many of these initiatives, though some have developed innovative partnerships with multi-sector stakeholders. A key example is Ruta N, an outreach and training centre located in the city’s tech and innovation district.

Tackling violence against women has also been a key issue for local violence prevention strategies in Medellín. As with other issues, the city’s approach has focused on addressing root causes of violence, which can often be identified in high levels of domestic violence. The city has sought to open a direct and open conversation on this, drawing a line of causation from violence in the family to violence in the community.

Policing and Security

Policing in Medellín plays an essential role in security, tackling organised crime, narco-terrorism, and urban violence. The city has led a series of extensive reforms in policing and security culture, designed to address the previously high levels of corruption. Building viable public institutions and services in policing has not only had a marked impact on the ability to enforce law and order, but has been principally designed to build trust with communities and develop public engagement at the local level.
Strengthening security departments, developing intelligence and information sharing systems, so that police and security have recourse to a breadth of information and the capacity to identify threats has been a core strand of the city’s resilience strategy.

The city has worked to develop a ‘citizen culture’ to ensure that every inhabitant feels they have a stake in the community at the same time as a responsibility to uphold dialogue, build inclusion and protect one other. Institutions and police are not excluded from this, and the city’s approach has sought to emphasise that everyone, regardless of their line of work, is as much an inhabitant and a citizen as much as they are a police officer or any other official or authority.

Though this work has been implemented at the local level in Medellín, it ties in strongly with the Colombian national policing strategy on urban violence, the Plan Nacional de Vigilancia Comunitaria por Cuadrantes (Spanish only), which emphasises crime prevention, community policing and local intelligence.

SCN WORKING GROUPS

Medellín has been an active member of the Strong Cities Network working group on refugees and internal displacement since joining the network and the International Steering Committee in September 2015. Through the working group, practitioners from Medellín have shared their experience with urban and rural-urban displacement resulting from the decades-long national armed conflict and from targeted threats of violence towards from gangs and organised crime groups against specific communities.

LOCAL POLITICAL LEADERSHIP

What We Do

Facilitate systematic sharing of knowledge, expertise and lessons learned on building social cohesion and community resilience to prevent violent extremism across cities on an international basis, through both regional workshops and international conferences.

Raise awareness of existing policy, programming, and practice through a dynamic and searchable ‘Online Information Hub’, providing an extensive library of existing local approaches and responses to prevent violent extremism.

Directly support cities to develop strategic frameworks and capabilities to build resilience that safeguard the rights of their local communities, including through capacity building seminars and interactive training modules on themes of mutual interest.

Directly seed the development of new and innovative projects through ‘Local Innovation Grants’, providing support for cities on innovative project development and support for the transfer of promising projects that could be adapted across different locations.

Directly support cities to develop strategic frameworks and capabilities to build resilience that safeguard the rights of their local communities, including through capacity building seminars and interactive training modules on themes of mutual interest.

Provide a global platform to enable cities to jointly voice their needs and those of their communities, to inform national and international decision-making on preventing the spread and growth of violent extremism.

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